Since Armoured Core came out and everyone's in a mecha mood, I figured I would talk about an entirely different mecha series instead. The plan is to watch one episode a day, talk about it, and include one (or more) screenshots to facilitate enhanced rambling. I want to start with the original series since I've watched it before, see if I can get through it all, and then maybe move onto some other Gundams if I have the spirit.
Beware! Spoilers for a 40 year old anime inbound, as well as possible misreporting since I probably am not going to fact check too well. Gundam nerds may feel free to correct me and dispense wisdom where appropriate. Also, I'm just going to go with whatever name spelling is on the subtitles I have at the time. Sorry, not sorry.
The first thing I have to talk about is the theme song, which honestly gives me emotions. Nowadays, we all have this image of Gundam as basically the show that invented the real robot subgenre, but you would absolutely never get that impression from the theme song or OP. Honestly, go find it and listen to it -- it's actually amazing how widely it misses the tone of the series, with lyrics like "Bring to bear the rage of justice!" and "If you are still burning with furious rage, you must fight the towering foe!" It sounds much, much more like a Super Robot theme song for like Daitarn 3 or Raideen or something, than something you would see associated with a classic "war is hell" series like Gundam.
And this was probably completely intentional. I remember hearing that even as far back as its initial run, the series had to fight the sponsors/toymakers in order to carve out its own identity, and part of that was projecting a surface level impression of a more palatable Super Robot style show. (Some things never change, I guess...)
To me, it adds a lot to the charm, because the singer is obviously going in and doing their best, singing an ode to a giant metal hero of justice who doesn't really exist outside of the fertile imagination of an advertising/toy exec who has been thoroughly mislead. I love that. I just want to go and tell them, hey, I appreciate you, you are singing your heart out on this theme song for an entirely different and imaginary series than the one they've actually made, and you're killing it. You are fighting the good fight, and you may be one of the reasons the series even got off the ground in the first place because you were part of this obfuscation.
This is Amuro Ray. His shadow looms large over every Gundam protagonist that will follow him; many of them either use him as a blueprint for their personality, or are meant as a study in contrast to it. He kills a lot of people. He eats a lot of sandwiches. There are long and intricate scenes of Amuro eating sandwiches, and they are among my favourite scenes in the whole series, and, in fact, any Gundam show I've ever watched. I'm not kidding.
I picked this screenshot not just because it shows a stone-cold, unrepentant sandwich-murderer in his natural habitat, but because it also showcases another thing I love about the show: the goofy animation. This was not a show with a huge budget. There is something weird or goofy happening in every episode, almost every scene, and the first episode -- traditionally one of the best funded in most series -- is no exception. Amuro eats like a turtle. Hayato's hand is an amorphous, misshapen blob. I think it honestly adds to the charm; the series is scuffed, and probably knows it's scuffed, but it's doing its best to tell a story in spite of that.
For now, Amuro is not the pilot of legend. He sits around the house doing science in his underwear, his neighbours don't like him enough to tell him about an actual military evacuation that he's supposed to be undertaking, and without the aid of his childhood friend Fraw Bow (who he mostly summarily ignores), he wouldn't bother to evacuate at all and would likely die at home. He's a scrunkly kind of dude. Maybe even a scrunklemeister. Your boy probably smells like a scratch and sniff card if you rubbed off all the panels and tried snorting them all at once.
The show is surprisingly quick at characterising him, too. Within a minute or two, we know all the above, plus that he seems to have a certain amount of tension with his father, who his neighbours blame for bringing the military to their peaceful colony. His father, Tem Ray, loves him at least enough to put a picture of him on his desk, and makes vaguely prophetic statements about how kids as young as Amuro are already joining the war as guerrilla fighters. Foreshadowing hit different in the eighties.
One scene I didn't actually remember, but really should have in retrospect, is the part where Amuro confronts his father ("Do you care more about Mobile Suits than humans?" is the absolute first thing Amuro says to him), and the death of Fraw Bow's mother and grandfather, both of which expose a more sensitive core to the scrunklebeast within. It's very convenient/poetic (delete as appropriate) that Fraw Bow was herself very nearly caught in the explosion that killed the crowd her family was in, and only survived because she separated from them in order to check on Amuro.
I was also kinda surprised to relearn that Amuro doesn't really 'fall in' to the cockpit; he very deliberately gets in, having happened to read the manual earlier, in an effort to either protect the remaining civilians or take revenge for the ones who've just fallen (the context doesn't really make it clear which one, but he rushes to the cockpit soon after Fraw Bow sees her family die and is making her escape).
One thing that's really interesting in the metacontext of the series is that although Amuro ends up being one of the best pilots (he's a legend in mecha anime for a reason), he kinda starts out as one of the worst. Many Gundam protags are either experienced, have some level of training, or have other reasons why they're hot shit right out of the box; Amuro really does not know what he's doing, and is carried entirely by the fact that the Gundam itself is dizzyingly durable for the time period. It also comes with a learning computer (which I bet sounded very advanced in the time the anime was made, but kinda brings certain chatbots to mind in the present day) to ease the piloting burden while he learns how to use the dang thing. Not only that, but he goes up against a lot of mobbers who aren't that much better than he is and can't do much against his much better machine.
(A really interesting experiment is to contrast Kira from SeeD, which follows a lot of the original Gundam's major story beats quite closely for the first part of the series and is almost a spiritual remake in some parts. Kira almost has the opposite end of the equation going on -- a very good pilot from day one, he has the misfortune of having five other named dudes who are close to his level and have machines that are arguably better than his in a vacuum, and he fights them pretty regularly.)
Anyway, through more luck than skill, Amuro manages to get through his first Mobile Suit battle in Side 7, but Bright is already looking to utilise him as labour, and Char is advancing on the colony. That's the first episode, more tomorrow. (I don't intend these to be exhaustive or talk about every little, but I wanted to go a bit more in depth for the first ep, and I don't want to restrict myself from veering off on tangents because those are fun.)
In the first half of this episode, we're treated to some slower scenes as the cast settle into their new positions on the ship, giving rations to the rescued civilians and generally taking care of business. Fraw Bow confirms that Amuro is indeed smelly and brings him fresh clothes, Amuro lets Bright live rent-free inside his head, and Sayla Mass talks smack to Bright because she apparently just talks smack to everybody. We are introduced to some worrying news: Bright, acting captain of the spaceship that goes through space and is currently in space at this moment in time, has never been in space before. Great. Wonderful. Bodes well for the future.
We are introduced to an interesting concept, though: when she learns that Bright grew up on Earth, Sayla sarcastically(?) calls him 'one of the elite'. A running theme of almost every Gundam series is a conflict between people living on Earth and people living in space colonies, but the reason tends to differ between series, and I get mixed up between them. Maybe she's hinting at the idea that folks on Earth are surrounded by Earth's bounty of natural resources, and thus are more affluent -- or the idea that being spaceborn (or a 'spacenoid' as it's sometimes called in the series) is a social stigma of some kind.
While it's not necessarily related, I'm somewhat reminded of Becky Chamber's Wayfarer series, taking place in the far future; humankind, weakest in position among the civilised races of space, were forced to abandon Earth en masse and have adapted by becoming an ultra economical species who spend their entire lives in spaceships, religiously recycling and letting no resource go to waste, even eating bugs that other sentients turn their noses up at. I do kind of like the idea of a future humanity who've learned their lesson.
Meanwhile, Char has requested reinforcements, but is dismayed to only get two Zakus instead of the three he asked for. Here we learn that Zeon is no longer overflowing with resources, and it too has been taxed by the war effort; while the Earth Federation has been and will be on the back foot for the time being, Zeon's powers are not unlimited. Even the ship delivering Char's supplies is so old he's surprised to see it still in service.
We can also infer that, despite his fearsome skills as a mobile suit operator, Char's reputation in Zeon might not be that great -- the man delivering them, Gadem, immediately jokes that he must have screwed up. Char's uncertain position in Zeon's political environment will be, let's say, a running theme.
After Mirai (in a surprising moment of bloodthirst) suggests they attack pre-emptively while Char is supplying, the White Base holds a vote. Most are in favour, but Bright tellingly waits until Amuro casts his vote in support before calling it. Of course, Amuro is the only real fighting force they have, so the vote is an essentially meaningless show of democracy if he says no; if they kill or confine him to force obedience, they have no pilot and the show cannot go on.
Thanks to Amuro teaching Ryu (trained soldier, core fighter pilot) not to attack when the sun is in his eyes and maybe position so that the enemy has to do that instead, they manage to land a few good shots on the supply ship. But it's not long before the Red Comet comes out to play.
Char Aznable, about to deliver an ass-kicking
Amuro still has absolutely no shot of beating Char in a fair fight, and gets solidly whupped. He runs out of ammo for his bazooka and even attempts the famed bazooka yeet for the very first time (one of my favourite SRW30 animations, incidentally), but to no avail; Char, having realised that the Zaku's weapons aren't really doing much, resorts to just smacking the shit out of the Gundam with punches and kicks. It's been pointed out before that this is absolutely the correct play; even if he can't damage the machine, the knocks and g-forces will eventually take out the pilot, who is currently by far the weakest link in the suit. However, the White Base's advance on the valuable supplies means he has to prioritise supporting his own mothership instead of going for the kill.
Meanwhile, the inexperience of the White Base's crew starts to show; Hayato doesn't even know how to pass a message to the bridge, Ryu can't be contacted because he forgot to turn on his comms, and that means they can't fire the main cannons at the enemy without hitting him. Even Bright gets in on the panicking action as the battle goes on. But Kai and Hayato launch in the Guntank, a shiny new toy that they both sort of know how to use.
The Guntank's first outing is a success and the supply ship is downed, but the Zakus have already been evacuated. Gadem, the supply ship captain, tries to 1v1 the Gundam in revenge; while he is indeed a superior pilot to Amuro and gets in a powerful shoulder tackle when Amuro attacks too quickly, the Gundam ultimately just tanks him, just like it's tanked everything so far. Amuro is forced to withdraw, with no weapons and no chance of handling Char; the Red Comet decides to prioritize salvaging what supplies he can, musing about his enemy. He's already sussed out that he's being beaten by the enemy weapons, and the soldiers piloting them fight like amatuers.
After some more headbutting with Bright, the episode ends as the White Base pulls closer to Luna II. But just because they're near an allied base doesn't mean Char isn't out to get them, and tensions are already beginning to heighten within the crew.
Time for Episode 2. After a high-octane first episode, EP 2 has some minor administrative stuff to take care of in regards to laying out the situation the protagonists will be in. As before, be wary of spoilers.
Pictured: the Captain of the White Base asking a sensible question about war machines that would later be almost exclusively piloted by people too young to legally drink
Let's talk about Zakus. People love Zakus. They're cute little cyclops guys, and they get totally manhandled basically from start to finish whenever they appear which gives them underdog points, but it's worth noting that at this point the story goes out of its way to establish that even a Zaku, the punching bag mook suit of future Gundam lore, is a huge threat.
Char reports losing two Zakus, and his superior cannot believe his ears. These are the shaky beginnings of mobile suits, and the Earth Federation doesn't really have any horses in that race yet. They're still trying to fight off Zakus with tanks and planes, and the Zakus are as far above conventional military vehicles as the Gundam is above the Zakus.
Two Zakus murdered entire crowds of people. They're stated to have wiped out almost every single military officer and engineer that was supposed to staff the White Base. They're directly responsible for the ongoing crisis that the protagonists experience throughout the series; those two random guys Amuro yolo'd in a suit he could barely get to stand up were more effective in stalling the Federation war effort than almost anything that follows.
And they sort've need to be that effective, because the audience needs to be sold on the premise of mechs as a weapon of war, subject to the logistics and concerns of the battlefield. Previous shows in the genre have been more super robot types, so they got a free pass, but the Zaku needs to show why you wouldn't just use a tank or more conventional vehicle, and that threat level has been established early on (even if it's mostly brushed over; as mecha fans will admit, the question "but why does it have to be a giant robot?" doesn't have any good practical answers outside of it being cooler. Even if you ignore things like the square-cube law and the difficulty in scaling up a humanoid body, even if you ignore how complex mecha would be in comparison to a tank loaded with the same armaments, the simple fact is that humanoid is not a particularly effective shape to be on a modern battlefield.)
Sayla Mass shortly after slapping a random civilian who has understandably elected to get himself away from an active battlefield instead of roaming around looking for survivors, then telling him he should be left behind to die instead of being evacuated. Her sweater has become part of her skin; she's a Na'vi from the neck down.
Sayla's an interesting character who basically never appears in other Gundam shows, despite the fact that she'd be pretty relevant to a couple of them and the series being quite happy to include previous major characters in later instalments. I forget why this is the case -- I think it might have had something to do with her VA? -- but either way, she's one of the few who doesn't return in any meaningful role, which means we can only enjoy her here.
Part of what makes her fun to watch is that, when she's not just randomly slapping potentially traumatised survivors of a military attack, she's generally pretty effective. Within minutes of us being told her name, she's pulled a gun on Char, who's snuck into the colony on foot to do a bit of spying (which is honestly something of a habit for him as the Gundam series goes on). He almost immediately disarms her because he's Char and also extremely effective when he wants to be, but hey.
Char Aznable playing Touhou in his off time. Seriously, this guy dodges lasers like it's going out of style.
As Char makes his escape with the valuable data, we're treated to what will become a fairly common sight: Amuro getting out the beam rifle and just kind of yeeting all of his ammunition at nothing in particular. This time, he has excuses; he's aiming at human targets in a mobile suit, and he's never really killed a human in cold blood before. He also pulls off a couple of neat shots where he hits two missiles mid-flight. But I remember the amount of times 'oh no I fired wildly with my rifle and didn't hit anything, and now I have no ammo!' became a complicating factor becoming something of a joke to me.
We're then treated to the first ever battle between Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, which ends up as more or less a stalemate. Make no mistake: Amuro gets completely manhandled by Char, who's an accomplished ace pilot with five battleship kills to his name. But the Gundam is so OP for this point in the series that, even though Amuro can't really touch him, Char can't really capitalise on the opportunity since the Gundam can tank his weapons head on. In the end, their skirmish is a mutual loss. Amuro loses to a pilot. Char loses to a suit.
But Char walks away with a head full of the Federation's military secrets and a much better understanding of the Gundam's threat level, and he has supplies and reinforcements on the way...
